Black Lies, Red Blood

Seventeen

She hugged him hard and long, and when she released her hold she nudged the money belt, laughed, and said something jokingly about the rich gringo with the artificial stomach.

He freed himself from her embrace.

“Shall we go in?”

She stepped to one side and as he passed through the doorway she caught him again, pressed herself against him, put her head against his shoulder. Her hair smelled of lemon.

She was wearing a white dress, with several clasps depicting birds tucked into her hair.

“I’m so happy,” she whispered. “I’ve been longing for you.”

He nodded and looked into her amazing eyes.

“We have an hour before Mama comes home. She’s nervous, you should know.”

He nodded again.

“But she won’t be home for an hour.”

She caressed his cheek.

“You’re warm,” she said, pulling on his T-shirt and fanning a little air in toward his upper body.

“Take a shower,” she suggested, leading him into the house, toward the bathroom.

He sensed what that hour might involve. Vanessa was extremely physical, as she herself put it. She loved bodily contact, was often ready for touch, took the initiative. The modesty she had shown at first had completely disappeared and was replaced by an openness that was a match for his.

“I think I’ll shower later,” he said, and his voice sounded considerably rougher than he intended.

“Are you tired? Do you want to rest before Mama gets here?”

He noticed a moment of disappointment in her eyes. He shook his head.

“Just a little thirsty.”

“I’ll get a beer, then we’ll sit in the shade behind the house.”

She went toward the kitchen. He watched her. I want her, he thought, suddenly aroused.

They sat down on the patio. A bird, whose call Anders Brant recognized very well, called out its encouraging song: come-on-along, come-on-along, come-on-along.

She poured the beer, carefully as usual, and set a glass in front of him.

“Skål,” she said.

The first word in Swedish that she learned.

“Skål,” he said, and reciprocated her smile.

His dehydrated, exhausted body greedily soaked up the cold beer. He immediately felt the effect of the alcohol. Maybe it will make this easier, he thought, and emptied the glass.

She observed him, but her smile had faded somewhat. She poured more beer. Her eyes rested steadily on his face.

He leaned his head forward, wiping his sweaty forehead. The belt pressed against his stomach.

“What’s that bird called?”

“I don’t know,” she answered immediately, as if she didn’t care to listen, as if birds were the last thing that interested her right now.

“I hear it a lot,” he said.

She nodded.

“It’s a pair that lives here. They’re building a new nest,” she said, pointing toward a scrubby tree in one corner of the yard.

He looked at the tree, took a gulp of beer, then let his eyes wander around the garden.

“It’s nice here,” he said.

“That’s Mama’s doing. I don’t do a thing.”

He knew that she was looking at him and he smiled, but avoided her eyes, pretending to be interested in the plants growing by the wall.

“Bougainvillea,” he said, pointing to the one plant that he could identify.

“What is it, Anders?”

Now! Now or never. He gave her a quick glance.

“I guess I’m a little tired,” he said, and was seized by the desperate thought of staying in this sweaty, dusty city, moving into the house, living with Vanessa and her mother.

He looked at her. Their eyes met. What more can I want? He continued his train of thought, what more can a man, and a human being, demand from life? She loves me, this is an amazing country where I feel at home, and maybe I would be happy here.

She looked searchingly at him.

“What is it?” she repeated.

“I’m thinking about us,” he answered at last.

It felt like he was about to start crying.

“About us, about everything, about life.”

She nodded with seriousness like a trembling in her face, as if now she was beginning to understand the extent of his ambivalence and lack of enthusiasm. That the simplest question in the world to answer for him was the cause of great anguish.

“It feels a little strange,” he said. “With us and everything, I mean.”

Make it easy for me, he thought, put me up against the wall, get furious, throw things at me, kick me out onto the street!

But none of that happened. Instead she got up and disappeared into the house. He listened to the sound of her steps moving across the tiles and then up the stairs to the second floor. Then there was silence, only the come-on-along of the bird sounded like a stubborn admonition.

Anders Brant wiped the sweat from his brow, reached for the bottle, but it was empty. He went to the kitchen to get another one. The refrigerator was well filled: there was salami, cheese, natural yogurt, which she knew he liked, vegetables, chicken sausage, a package with a kilo of “beef Paris,” and on the topmost shelf, in a transparent plastic container, a cake.

He stared at the abundance, and realized that Vanessa and her mother had stocked up before his visit. With the refrigerator door still open he looked around the kitchen, and the impression of an approaching party was reinforced: plates of mango, graviola, pineapple, passion fruit, and bananas. A beautiful glass bowl was heaped with umbu, the fruit that was a specialty in the dry inland and which Vanessa liked so much. They had umbu the morning she stayed over at his pousada for the first time. She had stood looking out over the harbor area and the bay and ate, apparently relaxed, fruit after fruit. He was still lying in bed and observed her back and shoulders, her bottom and thighs. She had a way of resting more on one leg. He thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, an impression that was reinforced when she turned her head and gave him a smile. On her chin a few drops of fruit juice glistened.

He took a bottle of Brahma, carefully shut the refrigerator door, and returned to the patio. Vanessa had not come back.

He poured the beer, took a drink and waited, increasingly intoxicated. The bird couple flew back and forth to the tree. In their beaks they were transporting building materials. Occasionally their come-on-along, come-on-along sounded.

Twenty minutes passed. He got up, wandered indecisively across the patio, but sat down again. Beer bottle number two was empty. He wanted more, even though he was really feeling the effects of the alcohol, and a minute or two later he was on his feet again, stumbled, went toward the kitchen, but changed his mind, stopped, and looked toward the stairway. Not a sound was heard in the house. Soon her mother would come home.

Maybe he could make use of the drama from the day before, in order to retreat in a dignified way. He had not said a word about what he had witnessed. What if he now hinted that he was shocked and depressed, that he could not make any decisions in that state of mind? Then perhaps he could return to Salvador with a few vague words about meeting later, postpone the whole thing, prepare her for the inevitable.

He thought about the most recent e-mail he had sent to Vanessa. In it he had written that they had to meet to discuss things, and let her know that he would go to Brazil, partly to visit her in Itaberaba, partly to collect material for a couple of articles.

He thought she would understand, that his e-mail was a signal that perhaps it would be best to end the relationship. The deliberately vaguely worded message would give her a warning. He could never live with Vanessa. He realized that after he met Ann.

It was obvious that Vanessa had drawn quite different conclusions. She had seen it as a confirmation of their relationship, that he was coming to discuss their common future, so she filled the refrigerator with delicacies and awaited his arrival.

“Vanessa!” he called toward the upper floor, but got no response.

He went up the stairs, looking around. To the right was a small room with a TV and a few armchairs, to the left a corridor with four doors, one of which was ajar; that was the bathroom. He listened outside the other rooms but heard nothing.

She was sitting at a desk in her bedroom. Hanging on the wall was the poster they bought in Salvador. On the nightstand was a pile of books. The one on top was a Portuguese-Swedish dictionary.

She was sitting very quietly, with her back to him. She must have heard him but did not turn around.

“Vanessa, what is it?”

She turned her head and observed him. He had expected a tear-filled face, but her expression was calm, resolute.

“Are you still here?”

He was shamelessly happy, but at the same time somewhat upset at her coolness.

“Do you want me to leave?”

He wished that she would tell him to go away, but she only shook her head with a joyless smile at his childishness.

“I have a hard time talking about…” he began, but got no further.

“You have a hard time finding words? You, who are constantly orating?”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“Who’s forcing you?”

He owed her a reply.

“I wrote a letter.”

“I don’t want your letters,” she said in a cutting tone.

In the money belt was the letter, written the day before with great effort, before the murder of the homeless man. In the envelope there was money too. In the letter he explained that it was enough to pay for her education to become a web designer, something she had dreamed of doing for several years, that the money should be seen as a gift, nothing else.

Now he could not bring himself to bring out the letter, and above all not the money. To her it would look like he was trying to buy himself free. The rich man with the money belt, who amused himself for a while, then tossed her a tip and went his way.

“Okay, you don’t want anything,” he said, throwing out his arms in a gesture of resignation, but his face remained beet red, recalling her unfeigned delight at the gate and the well-stocked refrigerator.

She looked at him with contempt and he left the room-the room where they should have made love, talked, and dreamed-and stumbled down the stairs and out of the house. On the paved path-he noticed how artfully the small black-and-white stones were set in a sensuous pattern-he almost ran into a woman. He noticed her terrified expression before he hurried on.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled, and ran out through the gate, calmed down somewhat so as not to attract too much attention, but continued hurriedly down the street. He felt how the sweat immediately forced its way out of every pore in his body. The sweat of shame. The headache, reinforced by the beer, and now the unmerciful sun, sat like a clamp around his forehead.

He walked toward the sun, toward the south, hoping that the bus station was in that direction, aware that he had carried out the most reprehensible of all actions: treachery against a person who loved him and trusted him. He had never before hated himself the way he did at that moment.

After a few blocks a feeling of relief came over him. It was done! He tapped his hand over the money belt. The letter he would tear to pieces.

Suddenly he stopped. A feeling of ambivalence came over him. He looked around, peered along the street. Perhaps she was standing there, hoping that he would change his mind, that she might call him back, that her love had overcome the icy cold and the unconcealed contempt of a humiliated person she had shown.

He spotted a few children at the ice cream seller’s canopied wagon, but no white dress, no Vanessa. He sensed that she and her mother were now united in a hateful, perhaps tearful, verbal thrashing of the faithless gringo.

Tears welled up in his eyes, seized as he was by the tragic element, by his own sentimentality, but also struck by a dash of self-pity for the deeply unjust judgments that were now being pronounced and which would mark their recollection of him for all time. He had tried! He was not malicious. His intentions had been good. He thought he loved her, that they would be together.

And how strong really was her own conviction? Hadn’t she also played a game, where hindsight had caught up with spontaneous passion? That alternative could not be overlooked. Her ice-cold contempt and immediate reaction-aloofness, no attempt to convince, no pleas, no tears-what was that a sign of?

For a few seconds he stood there irresolutely, took a few steps, stopped again, turned around, looked, took a few steps, a ridiculous dance of self-betrayal, when deep inside he knew that there was no way back.

Brant put up his hand and hailed a motorcycle taxi. He got a helmet from the driver and experienced a liberating sense of anonymity as he put it on. He straddled the motorcycle and was seized by the impulse to lean his head against the driver’s back, which was decorated with the name Kaka and the number eight.

The conveyance took off over the cobbled streets. It moved quickly. Brant fumbled with his hand behind his back and took hold of a bracket.

In ten minutes they were at the bus station and when he saw the ugly building just as a bus turned around the corner, he knew he had done the only right thing.

On my way, he thought. Never again Itaberaba. Never again Vanessa. He paid the motorcycle driver and gave him twice what he asked for the ride. Now I can be generous, he thought bitterly.

Although he was convinced he had made the right decision, anxiety pricked him like angry mosquitoes. Another bus came roaring, black smoke welled out of the tailpipe and the chassis rattled. He stood there in the sun. It was over 30 degrees Celsius in the shade.

“Who am I really?” he mumbled.

A car passed with music booming out of the open trunk. He saw women and men, playing children; he saw vendors of caju and ice cream, he heard shouts and laughter; he saw Brazil, and the ambivalence tormented his body, increasingly exhausted by the sun and the alcohol.

“I am a piece of shit,” he continued his monologue.

Angry and friendly honking marked buses that arrived and departed in a steady stream, stinking and rattling highway ships that careened around the building, and gear boxes clattered and scraped their bearings as they took off.

He realized now that he was a scared gringo. A gringo who would never be anything else either. He was scared, scared of losing something, perhaps a comfortable existence, the freedom of the vagabond, perhaps also the myth of Anders Brant, world traveler, the world’s conscience, the fighter for good.

The insight came suddenly, like an unforeseen smack to his solar plexus, and he was forced to support himself against the wall and take a deep breath.

He leaned forward, supported his hands against his knees and vomited. A cascade of beer splattered against the stone pavement on a small square under the scorching sun of Bahia.